


At Least the War is Over

by renegadeartist



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: M/M, Spoilers, au for season 13, rvb13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renegadeartist/pseuds/renegadeartist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone always thought Simmons would be the most affected if Sarge ever died. Everyone was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Least the War is Over

**Author's Note:**

> Not really sure why its in second person? Enjoy the pain.

Wake up. You turn your head, hoping to see the same person as before lying next to you, but it's just cold. He's not there, and that means no one's there. You have to keep telling yourself that or else you're afraid you'll end up waiting years for someone who's not going to come. He’s probably somewhere around the base, and you have to find him if you want to talk to him again. Just not now.

You swing your legs over the cot, feeling sore and tired even though you just slept for hours. Someone knocks on your door and you don't answer it but they come in anyways.

"You can't stay in here forever, sir. You'll have to come out eventually." You know. You don't have the energy to yell at the lieutenant like you usually do right now, so you just stand and stare out the window, hoping he'll leave. He does, and you see the remainders of the armies of Chorus trying to clean up the mess. The armor is all tan and white, there's no sign of any shade of blue or even red. You know most of them, the ones that are still on Chorus, are probably in the same state as you are. Everyone lost someone in the battle, and you are not an exception.

You aren't sure how it happened, just that it did. Red team, your team, had always had three members. Sure, Donut and Lopez were there sometimes, but it had always been the three of you since the very beginning, back at that canyon. Simmons, Sarge, and you.

How did it all become so complicated?

You didn’t regret it all that much, honestly. At least, through it all, the three members of red team had all been together, at least for the most part. Even when it was just you and Simmons it didn’t take long for Sarge to find you again. He’d shown up and you’d been whole again, they were roped back into whatever crazy adventure blue team was going on this time. It had always sort of felt like a game, and you supposed it was, since you were just simulation soldiers.

Were. Were simulation soldiers.

Now you’re a captain and you’re in charge of people, real people, people that can die. You’re expected to be a leader, a real leader, and you have to be everything that applies. Sure, you’re still the lazy slob that Simmons always accuses you of being, but this time there are actual lives on the line. It didn’t really hit you till that last battle, the one that left everyone with too many scars to know how to properly deal with them.

Everyone, especially the reds and blues, were trying to cope with it all. It was the first time that something like this was so real, since they thought Sarge and Wash had been captured by the “bad guys.” This was a thousand times worse, because you had seen him, during the battle. You had _seen him,_ and this time there was no hope that he was still alive because even as your gun fell from your hands there he was, _dead._

It was so much worse because there was no way, absolutely no way, that Sarge would ever walk these halls again. There was no vague hope, only stone cold _sadness_ that seemed to consume every part of your being. It makes you feel horrible, beaten down, so unbelievably _tired_ that you couldn’t work up the strength to even cry. You just lay there in the dark, not quite sure how to deal with the loss you had never thought would happen. You want to collapse on the ground and cry your eyes out, but something that Wash had said once, in a rare moment that you had listened to the man, sticks out at you.

“You’re a captain, Grif,” he had said, “You have to be strong when no one else can be.”

You don’t feel very strong, but maybe you can look it. Besides, you have to talk to him _eventually._ He was as torn up about Sarge as you are, and you don’t want the silence to persist any longer. You leave your room and any and all soldiers that see you avert their gaze and shuffle away. You recognize Jensen, the one on Simmon’s team. You ask her where he is.

“I-I don’t know,” she said, hiccupping in between her words. She was crying, and you felt like you had to do something. You’re a captain, you have to be strong when no one else can. You pull her into a hug and she grips you hard, almost painfully.

“What happened?” you ask, because you don’t remember any of the names of the dead because you didn’t listen as they were read out. You were too busy wallowing in self-pity. “Who… who died?”

She looked up at you and you realized this was the first time you had seen her without armor on. She’s so young. Too young. “Bitters,” she whispered, and you’re not sure how to feel. Guilty, for one. You feel guilty because you didn’t even _know_ that someone from your team was dead, that you didn’t save him even though you were nowhere near him during the battle. You feel crushed, empty, because there’s no room in your heart to be sad anymore.

You stand with Jensen for a while, just letting her be sad at her friend’s death. You wish you could cry, but you just can’t. You’ve cried long enough. Besides, you’re a captain. You’re supposed to be strong. Supposed to be.

Afterwards you resume looking, and this time you find Caboose, looking out at the soldiers milling outside. It reminds you of when you went looking for Kimball, asking around just to annoy her about rations. Before circumstances made you drop your usual sarcasm and actually work for once. Maybe if you started sooner more people would still be alive.

You ask Caboose if he’s seen Simmons. “I think he’s over there,” he says, oddly serious. You suppose he has every right to be. He was closer to the freelancers then you were. You don’t want to stay and talk, to ask what’s wrong, because, again, you don’t have enough room in your heart for it right now. You go to where he pointed, and find Simmons sitting behind a crumbling wall.

You wonder how long it’s been since you’ve looked at him in the face instead of a visor. He looks terrible, with sunken eyes and shaking hands. He looks thinner then he normally is. You suppose you all do. He doesn’t notice you at first, not until after you sit next to him.

He doesn’t look up, but you can hear him silently crying. His red-rimmed eyes find your face and for once he doesn’t smile or roll his eyes. He looks almost as hollow as you feel. You missed him this morning, but it wasn’t like you expected him to face you after what happened. You weren’t sure how he reacted because you avoided everyone after the battle.

“Go away,” he said.

“No,” you replied.

He blew hot air at your face and rested his head against his knees. You reached over to comfort him, but as soon as your hand made contact with his back he flinched away and you stayed silent. It’s the first time you’ve seen him since Sarge’s death, and suddenly the pain and the grief come back in full force and a terrible, sick feeling gathers in your stomach as your eyes burn.

“I didn’t know he was dead,” Simmons says after a while. “I went looking for him after the battle.” More silence. “Did you know?”

“Yeah,” you say, and your voice cracks. You wipe the hot tears that are streaming down your face, hoping that Simmons doesn’t see.

“You did?” Simmons asks, and you can hear the anger in his voice. You suppose he needs someone to be a punching bag. You can be that person. “Why didn’t you tell me!?”

“I… I don’t know,” you say, and you really don’t. Maybe you just didn’t want to be the one to tell Simmons. You wonder who did.

“You don’t know? You don’t know why you didn’t tell me that Sarge was… that he…” Simmons gulped, and stood up, knuckles white from his tight fists. He looked down at you, and if he noticed the tears he doesn’t say anything. “You of all people should have understood how… how important he was to me. I don’t… I don’t know what to do now that he’s gone. I just want him _back.”_

Simmons’s voice was gradually increasing in volume, already hoarse from all the crying. You stand up and rest a hand on his shoulder. This time he doesn’t flinch, he just glares. “I miss him too, Simmons.”

“How could you?” He laughed, almost hysterically. “You always hated him!”

You hate the hot pain that races through you at that. Did everyone really think that? Probably. It wasn’t like you gave them reason to think otherwise. You wonder if Sarge knew how much you cared. You open your mouth to talk, but you can’t form words and suddenly the world is distorted and it looks like you’re underwater from all the tears you won’t let fall. Simmons’s face turns to shock.

You grip his shoulder and pound on his chest, breathing erratically, trying to calm down. The emptiness was better than this. At least when you couldn’t cry no one knew how much you hurt. “I didn’t hate him,” you finally manage to choke out. You feel thin arms wrap around you and you wrap your own hands around his back. You bury your face in his chest as it becomes soaked. “I didn’t hate him,” you say again, hoping it would reach Sarge, wherever he was. You don’t want him dead thinking you never cared about him.

“I know you didn’t,” Simmons says.

You stand there for a long time, not willing to face the world again. You don’t want time to move forward anymore, you don’t want to be any farther away from Sarge, from being red team. You wish desperately to be back at that canyon, back when everyone was alive and you weren’t a captain and the threat of losing people to war wasn’t a reality. You wanted to go back to how it used to be so you could fix everything, but you know you can’t.

By the time you have to go back to being a captain you’ve cried as much as you need to, but there’s still a hole in your heart, a hole where Sarge used to be, where Bitters used to be, where everyone that died used to be. You hope it will close with time, but at the same time you’re almost certain it won’t. It reminds you that you’re still alive, that there are people in the world that still need you, people that look up to you. The hole is large and painful, but you’re not sure you want to let it go. You’re sure of one thing, though.

You really just don’t want to forget them.


End file.
